Almost Saw and Accident-Who has seen one

[newmei]

I personally have seen two. One was a Long Ez departing, he relized that his canopy was unlocked it went to abort his brakes faded and he ran off the side of the runway and flipped over on his side. Minor injuries

The other was a engine failure in a 150 from carb ice. They came in short and hit a 6 foot tall berm head on and flipped over breaking one of the guys neck.
Still gives me shivers.

I'm sure we will get some interesting stories on this one.

 

[partialpanel]

Several years ago, I was at my school just hanging out. A man, his wife and four-year-old son climbed into their c-310 for a flight to retrieve a puppy (it was the little boy's b-day). The pilot apparently rejected the longer runway because of cross-wind. The remaining, shorter runway also had a cross-wind, but it was better in the pilot's opinion. Right away in his takeoff roll he exhibited directional control problems and about half way down the runway he went into the grass. He kicked hard right rudder to steer back to the runway and apparently had a left prop-strike with the dirt. Rather than abort, he completed the takeoff with a sick left engine and made a continuous left turn to impact in an empty lot of a heavy residential area. According to people at the actual crash site, all were alive post-impact, but fire prevented any rescue.

 

[avbug]

I've watched several airplanes land gear up. I watched a Harrier crash years ago, and have been present for several agricultural wrecks. I extracted the pilot from one, and put out the fire. I saw a lear grind it's right main gear off once after the tire exploded. I've seen a few airplanes ground loop. Watched a 185 crash on takeoff, once; pitched straight up, then straight back down. I was present when the first of the final five T-38's crashed on the Thunderbird team (Lt. Nick Hauk) at HAFB; that was something like 16 years ago.

I've been in close proximity to several airplanes that have started up with objects in the way, including one person who taxied into his car, and another who nearly hit me with pieces of his towbar.

Numerous ground fires, a number of in flight fires. I saw a helicopter go in once in California. I was present last fall for the wreck (albeit minor) or a government airplane on a training fight. I had an onboard explosion that removed about twenty feet of metal on the back end of an airplane, once. I've seen a few ultralights crash, most not too serious, one fairly serious. Just missed being present when friend was killed in one.

I've been present, and have treated, several individuals who had bad parachute accidents (the last one being in August of last year). I had three landings yesterday that could have easily been termed "crashes"; the result of attempting to land a parachute that I shouldn't have been jumping. I've had one significant parachute crash that resulted in time spent in intensive care, though head injuries have precluded me from remembering seeing most of it.

I was present many years ago when a gentleman attempted to handprop a light experimental airplane with the wing tied down, the tail not tied down, the mags both on, and the throttle set at half. After the airplane ran him over it struck a fuel truck and punctured it. He survived, but I'm reasonably certain he never did that again.

I've been present at many wrecks after the fact, over the years. None are anything one would care to remember.

Aircraft wrecks are much like car wrecks; if one has seen one, one has seen one too many.

 

[Cardinal]

Just today it occured to me to ask the jump pilots on here if they've ever lost any of their jumpers. If newmei doesn't mind a little thread hijacking, I'm curious.

 

[T1bubba]

I didn't actually see the impact, but a couple years ago I came around a corner just in time to see a large fireball off the end of one of the runways... turns out it was a T-37 flown by a student on his second solo. They left the wreckage of the plane out there for a few days, there's nothing like flying over a debris field on short final to dampen your mood at the end of a flight.

Several years back I almost saw an E-3 land gear up. We were following them on final debating whether or not we could see their gear. When they were on short final the IP I was with told them to check their gear. His transmission was immediately followed by tower yelling "E-3 on final, go around, go around, go around!!!". I'd guess they were less than 100 feet off the runway when they went around. They did their next one to a full stop, by the time we landed about ten minutes later the safety guys had already grabbed them and dragged them off to debrief. The flight was an instructor qualification flight, two senior pilots and a FE all forgot to finish the checklist.

T1bubba

 

[avbug]

Never had a jumper on one of my loads get hurt (except me). People I've jumped with in the past are dead now, as the result of jumping, and a pilot with whom I used to fly and jump, and whom I flew while he was jumping, was killed last year while flying a load of jumpers. The DZ where I jump lost an airplane and a load of jumpers. The DZ where I used to work lost several airplanes over the years (no fatals, I believe; stupid acts such as sucking gear up early on a Cessna 411, and buckling the firewall landing on the nosegear of a 182).

Jumping is quite safe; there is nothing to hit on the way down.

 

[Sheik_Yer_Booty]

Was in the stands at Kennedy Space Center, January 28, 1986… a sad day in aviation.

 

[avbug]

Dick Scobee was right though, you know. It IS a crime to get paid for doing something one loves so much. A lot of wisdom in that statement. I believe he made that comment in one of his final interviews.

 

[Joseph II]

I have not witnessed any accidents, but last year my friend watched his jumper go out of his 182, and then had to fly over the corn field searching for his body.

We had an accident here between Denver and Colorado springs where a twin with 4 people went into a hillside just a 1/4 mile from the interstate. I saw the police and investigators, but the airplane was hidden from view. Apparently they had engine trouble and carb ice is suspected. It was too bad.

 

[tarp]

Avbug's last line was correct. After you have seen one aviator lose his life, you wish to never see it again. I was a little slower - I used to follow the aerobatic and air show circuit. I have personally seen (and felt) two fireballs, watched as four people lost their lives in four separate incidents. Picked up the pieces of two fatal wrecks (not associated with air shows). And have probably seen something like 15 different accidents. I do not wish to recount a single one.

However, in the spirit of sport I will tell you about two funny Bob Hoover incidents. One was at York, PA quite a few years ago. Bob was doing his usual Shrike Commander routine but did his knife edge pass a little lower than usual and not quite down the runway. It was very impressive as he caught a power line with the lower left wing. Lots of sparks and noise. I don't think Bob ever knew till he parked the plane. Just kept going on the routine. Did his single engine thing and taxiied to his parking space. He knew something was up when almost the entire crowd ran to see him get out of the plane. That Shrike was amazing - a cut in the leading edge boot and the wire stripped about four feet of the outer boot cover from the hit mark out to the tip. Not another scratch on the plane!

Many years later in Reno, NV at the air races, Bob was picked to lead the Unlimited racers out to the line. He had to pass. I watched as he cranked up that magnificent yellow Mustang. He probably taxiied all of 50 feet when (all of us aghast) he simply just ran right over his own pickup truck that was parked out on the ramp. It was the only thing within 500ft of the airplane and I guess he just forgot it was there. The Mustang doesn't have very good forward vision and most of those guys zigzag out of parking spots to clear the area, but good ol' Bob just plowed straight for the runway and well, gave up a pretty good prop and I guess they got to inspect his engine after that one. The pick up truck didn't look too good either.

 

[Snakum]

Meatball incident ...

July 4th celebration at Fort Benning, GA watching the Ranger Demo Team ... the 5th guy out of the UH-1 got a streamer, dropped his main, pulled his reserve and it promptly rolled up around him. You could see him clearly silhouetted against the sky as he frantically tried to untangle the chute. He stopped fighting and went spread-eagle for the resistance and augured into the trees about 50 feet from the stands.

AIRBORNE!!!!!!!!!

Minh

 

[DiamondJim]

I've had the unfortunate privalage of witnessing a few accidents, a couple fatal. The first one I remember was seeing Tom Jones spin his Sukoui into the ground at OK City airshow several years ago...What a tragedy that was. Then I witnessed a VMC roll of a twin commander while trying to circle to land after an engine falure.... two dead. I've seen two different students cartwheel 172's on thier first solo's in gusty conditions... nonfatal, and they weren't mine. I also witnessed a heavily loaded Grumman Tiger go into the tree's after trying to takeoff from a short grass strip leaving four dead.

All tragic but good examples of learning from the mistakes of others as you won't live long enough to repeat them all yourself.

 

[aggiepilot87]

Saw an unlimited racer come apart in Reno a few years back. I believe they finally decided it was either rudder or elevator flutter. Either way, there was nothing but pieces flying through the air in the blink of an eye. Like Avbug said, it was enough for me - very surreal and sobering. The announcers and others at the race were hopeful about the outcome of the pilot for a while, but it was obvious to me you don't get away with smacking the ground at 450-mph.

I was at IAH few years back and saw a KLM 747 have a pretty good engine strike. Lots of flames & smoke, but no one hurt. I've heard it's not hard to do in a 747, but I'm sure it didn't help his career.

 

[RJFlyer]

Avbug - remind me never to get into an airplane if you're anywhere in the line of sight...

 

[TurboS7]

Over the years like Avbug I have seen my share. I saw two that were spectacular in that there was a lot of boom and I was the first one to the airplane. I shot the approach at DPA years ago when they had the short 4000 foot east west runway. I went right down to minima but got in and taxied to the hangar. I got out of the airplane and walked to the end of the hangar so I could see how a Baron did that was following me on the approach. I heard the engines start to come up for the miss then they went back to idle with several large backfire's. To my total surprise out of the fog came the Baron, he flared and hit hard, upon impact the aircraft blew up, the fireball was so big that the fog dissipated then came back. I started running to the aircraft full blast, I was 30 feet from it when from behind the flames the pilot came walking out as calm as could be. I asked him if anyone else was in the aircraft and he said," no". I got the guy a safe distance from the aircraft just as the second fuel tank went. By the time the fire truck got there the Baron was just a pile of rubble, only the tail was left.
Another time I was loading freight in my Lear in FNT. This time I heard a hugh bang and some scrapping, I looked up to see a PA-31T going by on its belly, on fire. It stopped just 100 yards from where I was standing. I jumped the fence and ran right to the aircraft. Both engines were screaming and the pilot was just sitting at the controls doing nothing. I ran inside the aircraft pulled the conditioner levers to cutoff, shut off the battery and dragged the pilot out. Just after I got the pilot out rescue covered the aircraft with foam. I went back to the Lear jumped in it and flew my trip...all in a days work.

 

[navigator72]

%&$$#^

I saw a WWII plane taxi into a parked military car at an airshow. I was also at an accident scene a couple of minutes after a C172 lost an engine on takeoff and stall/spinned it into the remaining runway (3 dead). In my 3 years of driving jumpers, I have only seen a sprained ankle (thank god). I don't think I could fly jumpers again if I saw one of them die.

 

[Frank Bama]

I was at Oshkosh back in '98 when a Corsair tried to take off behind a Bearcat that hadn't started it's roll yet. The Corsair slammed into the Bearcat's wing ripping it off and forced the Corsair to cart-wheel down the runway. It immediately caught fire and had burst into flames. The heat that I felt almost 200 yards away was extremely intense. Everyone did survive, but the Corsair pilot was paralyzed. It surely was a terrible sight to see.
Fly Safe!

 

[8sm]

Here's a few for the thread,
We had just returned from the Grand Canyon and were heading home. The Capt. and I were sitting at a intersection waiting for the light to change. The weather was typical moonson July Phoenix weather, the wind was howling and kicking up dust. Just over our heads, a Skylane trying to land made the decision to go around. We both saw this and pulled to the side of the road at the end of the runway. The dust was so thick you could hardly see 100ft. Directly in front of us on the centerline climbing comes this Skylane on what seemed like another go around. Then about 650ft and 1/2 mile on the extended centerline, he started going down in a residental neighborhood. We drove towards the area not knowing what to find. The pilot landed belly up on a greenbelt between several homes both were as expected shook up.
The other I witnessed, at the same airport, while sitting in the airport managers office jaw jacking. The office is setup with this giant picture window to the managers back while sitting at his desk. Were talking about the grand opening of our new business, when I notice this medium size 4 engine prop aircraft on final. Then I see it take a very extreme nose down desend into the desert then a big cloud of dust from the impact, just as his handheld radio goes off with the tower telling him of the crash. We are one of the first out to the crash site. Crawling out of the aircraft is the pilot, with his shoulder length hair, shorts, sandels, hawaiian shirt and a flightbag with all kinds of colorful stickers and patches on it a Jimmy Buffet fan for sure. The guy was not hurt and very calm. We took a peek inside the aircraft which was not badly wreck and found some very dry fuel cells. He said " I was running on fumes Man, I almost made it. " He did manage to retrack the gear before impact which did save the aircraft. An FBO on field did manage fix everything and about 8mons later it left the airport. Apparently, this aircraft was on a ferry trip to Hawaii. About a year later I saw the same aircraft on the tramac at HNL International.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

I was in HS, at my very first airshow, with a 6 year-old girl on my shoulders. It was a local airshow at our little town with 1 stunt pilot. He was very experienced, but the weather wasn't great.

He was doing snap rolls while diving at the ground. He was getting low, and I said, if he does one more, he won't have room to pull out. He did one more.

He managed to rotate the aircraft to a flat attitude prior to impact which saved his life. The sound from the aircraft hitting the runway was very load. He had numerous back operations, and was in the hospital for 8 months or so. After his crash, they closed up and didn't serve breakfast anymore. The 6 year-old I was holding was very upset.

I also saw the Challenger explode live while watching the Disney Channel. My roomate (at Ft. Rucker, Army/AF helo flight school)kept asking me what happened, and I kept telling him it blew up.

During the Gulf War, we heard some other pilots over the frequency describe a Marine F-18 being shot down over Kuwait. We never did find out if that guy ejected and/or lived.

Cliff

 

[troy]

On our way back from a WESTPAC deployment, we had a small airshow for our family that embarked in Hawaii. There was an F-14 doing a strafeing run at some smokes in the water and his gun mount/forward bearing siezed up. The result was that the gun kept fireing, but twisted inboard and upward, shooting out the radar. No one hurt, but got to see "battle damage" on the nose and radar.

 

[DC4boy]

I was 30 seconds ahead of the S2 midair in Cal. last year, 4 mins behind a 182 that spun in on a departure last spring, heard one on the radio, but have been fortunate enough never to have seen one.

 

[Jump Pilot]

Third year of flying jumpers. Everyone has made it. We kind of have a ritual before I call door. They wish wish me a safe ride down and I tell'em I'll see them on the ground.

Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane? You hven't seen our plane.

 

[EagleRJ]

I was number 5 or 6 in line for takeoff at John F. Kennedy, and watched a Swissair MD11 go by on the takeoff roll. It wasn't until I got into the hotel that night that I found out he had gone down off the coast of Nova Scotia (Flight 111).

 

[POKEY]

Back in the early 80's I was at Fort Bragg, NC for some kind of military display. A C-130 was coming in to do kind of a touch and go (think its called a LAPES?) and drop a tank out the back as it touched down and was supposed to fly back out. Instead they came in high, nosed it over and as they were getting close to the ground pulled up a little late and smacked the ground real hard. the airplane then bounced a couple of times went off the end of the dirt strip and exploded in the trees. I think six or seven were killed including some on the ground. I was about two or three hundred yards away.

 

[stingray]

After working for 5yrs for an airport in sw fl. I've witnessed a few.
an R-22 lost its tail rotor while I was staring right at it. it whent into the trees
A couple of gear up landings.
various pilots screwing up on landings, nose gears getting torn off, a few planes flipping, and most of them departing the runway.
2 planes that i flown the very next guys to fly them wrecked them.
all lived.
Here is one that I won't forget though. I will try to keep it short.
When I was still flying a 414 I was on a flight I did about 4 times a week into Boca Raton. On one of them, about 30 seconds after I checked in with Palm Beach approach, a convair comes on the freq doing the mayday call saying they have a major control malfunction they don't think they can make it to any airport. either the pilot or approach said something about using the turnpike. Then in a shakey scared voice the pilot says again we are not going to make it, ( you can tell these guys thought they where going to die). Approach ask me to stay in the area so I could tell them where the convair goes down at. I'm thinking holy sh** this isn't good at all. Boca Raton got closer so they started to head directly for the field. Approach again ask me to stay on the freq so I can tell them what happens.
The convair lands safely, I let approach know, everyone is releaved. I land a minute behind the convair. My paxs go on there way. I run into the pilot of the convair as the paramedics where checking him out (His hands where raw from fighting the plane) I told him I was the other plane up there and that he did a dam good job at getting the plane down safely, he looks at me in a daze and with a shaken voice says thanks, then gets in the ambulance. The planes elevator trim tab was 70% missing, the right elevator itself was torn completly in half from the leading to trailing edge, along with other holes. It was amazing they made it.
My father who is retired from Eastern once told me a few yrs ago:
If anyone is in this Busines long enough your are bound to have friends loose their lives to it. Unfortunatly it had already came true when i was about 25, 10 yrs ago.

remember everyone Fly Safe

 

[newmei]

Hey DiamondJim,

Was that Twin Commander accident that you saw in Ennis, Texas???? If so the right seater was a friend of ours. Sad....

 

[ShawnC]

Unfornatly I saw two, both on Saturday at Sun n Fun.

 

[avbug]

I was doing a cleanup pass in an AgTruck outside Dighton, KS, when the airplane ahead went through four powerlines. You don't have any forward vision when putting out 2,4-D in calm winds, because the windscreen is painted white. It was early, no wind, no turbulence. He pulled up at the end through a quad set of lines. I had to land ahead of him because we weren't sure if he could shut down the runway.

Cut a good share of the way through the prop, removed the leading edges and wing tip, messed up the gear a bit, tore off the booms at the outboard boom hangars and removed the boom ends, cracked the canopy, and a few other things. Three hours of emergency field repairs, and we were back in the air working again. I flew it to Wichita that fall for repairs.

 

[enigma]

Once is enough

I was watching a third rate airshow in Killeen Texas sometime aroung 1984 when I was in college. Most of the performers were from a nearby, (Dallas if I remember correctly) Aerobatic club. The accident happened when a Stevens Akro attempted a snap roll and allowed the plane to rotate an extra 180 degrees which left him inverted and pointed slightly towards the crowd with about 45 degrees nose down. I was sitting on top of an old Beech 18 that our flight school had near the opposite end of the field, watching through the long lens of my old Pentax and never had the presence to click the shutter. Anyway, instead of aileron rolling back upright, the poor soul decided to split s from about 400 feet. You could see it when he realized that he didn't have enough altitude to complete his pull out, he pulled so hard that he stalled the aircraft and it pancaked in from about 75 feet. The Akro broke in half and the poor bastar-d pilot bounced about 20 feet in the air.

Watching that really stunk.

It turned out that the pilot had had a leg operation some weeks previous and that was the first time he had flown after the operation. The investigators thought that maybe he didn't have the leg strength, or feel, to adequately use the rudder. We later learned that his leg was bothering him enough that he had another pilot walk the three hundred yards to the hangers to get the Akro and taxi it to the flightline.

This is a depressing thread, but I'm adding this in hopes that we all are reminded not to fly when we are not 100%.

8N

 

[DiamondJim]

New MEI --- Ennis

NewMEI,

Yes, it was the crash in Ennis. I believe it was Charlie- Can't remember his last name from Cardinal aviation in Lancaster in the right seat. I dont mean to judge, but I can't figure for the life of me how someone with his experience got in that situation. I was standing outside the FBO building when they came screaming over just over the flagpoll and then went in.

Are you from that area? I flew out of Ennis for a while and also over at Mid/Wae in Waxahachie.

DJ